Community

Engaging with communities and charities

We are committed to encouraging community engagement throughout our company, giving individuals the opportunity to support a wide range of charities and communities.

‘To bee or not to bee’ engagement campaign

Our campaign was launched in April 2017 to raise awareness of the decreasing bee population and their important role as pollinators for many of our foods. Read full article

We have designed a campaign pack including posters, suggested actions, competitions and bee-friendly wild flower seeds to encourage participation internally, working with our employees and externally with local communities.

Our sustainability coordinators, two of whom are beekeepers have been creating bee gardens, planting seeds, making bee houses/hotels and actively engaging with local bee keepers and organisations at their locations and at home. Our Basingstoke site has set up a partenrship with a local bee keeping business, Becky’s Bees, to sponsor 50 bee hives and provide food for the bees by working with one of our suppliers – Hill Farm Oils. Paddock Wood already have bee hives with over 300.000 bees on site, Salisbury have set up hives at their location and several of our sites are looking into doing the same.

We’ve also had visits from regional beekeepers to each of our depots to educate our sustainability coordinators, including Jim Pearson and Mark Miliard from Wakefield & Pontefract Beekepers Association. They explained how Bidfood’s sugar donations help feed their bees when there is a lack of flowers around.